The Marquess Who Loved Me

Chapter TWENTY-TWO


The next morning, Nick wasn’t in the mood to discuss his impending demise. To be fair, he wasn’t in the mood for much of anything beyond finding Ellie and trying, again, to unearth whatever feelings she hid behind her mask.

But even though Nick had spent more time obsessing over Ellie than pursuing whoever wanted him dead, he could still force himself to consider that issue instead. It had taken a renewed urgency overnight. While he had lain in his chamber, mostly sleepless, his would-be assailant had struck a different target.

“Have there been any other fires in the area?” he asked Marcus.

Marcus had just joined him the breakfast room, and he speared a forkful of ham from the sideboard before replying. “No fires. I rode into the village after you dragged me out of bed this morning. No one has heard anything suspicious. The timing is good for someone wanting to escape notice, though. You’re the most interesting bit of gossip around. It is easier for a stranger to pass through unremarked when everyone is more interested in what your return might mean for them.”

Nick raked a hand through his hair. It was only eight a.m., and he had been in the breakfast room for half an hour waiting for Marcus’s report, but his hair still smelled of smoke. His batman had awoken him at six with the news that the shed where they had kept the highwayman’s body was on fire. The staff had contained the blaze, thanks to a stableboy who smelled the smoke before the fire spread to other outbuildings. But the shed, and the body it housed, were destroyed.

“I sent Trower to London to make enquiries about the tattoos,” Nick said. “But the threat surely lies closer than that. The roads are better this morning than they were yesterday, but I find it unlikely that anyone in London ordered the fire.”

Marcus placed his filled plate on the table and sat down next to Nick. One of the ubiquitous footmen poured his coffee and refreshed Nick’s cup, then busied himself with tidying the sideboard. Nick didn’t recognize the footman, but he could have passed him in the house a dozen times and not noticed him. Ellie’s servants were innumerable, and they were meant to vanish into the background.

Marcus wasn’t watching the footman, though. Nick couldn’t fully trust a staff he didn’t know, but Marcus had no qualms about speaking in front of them. He shoveled a bite of eggs into his mouth, pausing to chew before continuing his report. “No one is missing anything. Not horses, not clothes, not even foodstuffs. In the dead of winter, families would notice if preserves or seed were stolen. But the pub owner hasn’t fed anyone he didn’t know since you came through before the party.”

Nick frowned. “Could someone lodge with a family nearby?”

“Possibly. Your tenants are mostly prosperous, but few would turn their noses up at extra income. But he would have to have a good reason for not staying at an inn and for keeping his identity secret — people might want his money, but they would be suspicious of perfect strangers.”

“So it’s likely someone who was already in the neighborhood?”

“Or with ties to it,” Marcus said with a shrug. “Or he is staying farther afield — it would take days to investigate all the inns he could be at, particularly if he has stayed in London and only comes here to wreak havoc.”

Nick leaned back in his chair. “Why was destroying the body so important? What could it have told us?”

Marcus cut into his ham. “The tattoos were the only evidence, unless he thought someone in the area might recognize the man himself. The assailant knew the body was there, but he must not have known that Ellie had drawn the tattoos already.”

Nick swirled his coffee in his cup, losing even more heat into the chilled air of a country house in winter. “If it’s tattoos, the connection between the dead man and the highwayman might have come at sea.”

“That eliminates me and Ellie as suspects, if you follow that reasoning.”

“And leaves Rupert.”

Marcus winced. “It can’t be Rupert. Even if he had ordered your death in India, he couldn’t have heard yet that you’ve come home.”

“Unless Sebastian Staunton is in his employ. He came from the Caribbean a few months ago.”

They both considered that idea — and both snorted at the same time. “Staunton and Rupert are equally unlikely,” Marcus said. “Can you picture Sebastian as a murderer?”

“No. He’s so intent on seducing Ellie’s sisters that he barely spares me a glance,” Nick said. “And you are right. Even if Rupert does want me dead, he would be hard pressed to arrange it from so far afield.”

Nick drained his coffee and rose to stand by the heater. Ellie had installed a standing porcelain stove of Swedish design when she had remodeled the breakfast room, and the green and gold painted enamel was a welcome change to the open fireplace in his bedchamber. He rubbed his hands together. She kept the house warm enough — on his money — that he wouldn’t get chilblains like he had in the drafty, ancient expanses of Eton. But he still felt chilled — whether from the weather or from the risk he’d brought to all of them, he didn’t know.

“I should return to London,” he said. “No sense putting anyone here at risk of another attack gone awry.”

He heard footsteps in the hall. Marcus must have heard them as well, because he held his response to Nick’s remark. Nick turned as the footsteps stopped — just as Ellie entered the breakfast chamber.

Her eyes were cool and her red curls were perfectly contained atop her head, but even in a proper blue morning dress she had a sensuous, undeniable appeal. He wanted another chance at what they had done in the study the night before — a chance to see if the tenderness he’d denied her so far might break something that his anger had only fortified.

But this wasn’t the right time to seduce her. “Good morning, Lady Folkestone,” he said.

“Lord Folkestone. Mr. Claiborne,” she said, greeting both Nick and Marcus even though she never turned away from Nick’s gaze. “May I break my fast with you, or are you discussing business?”

She was formal, but he couldn’t read whether it was a display for the footman or a crutch for her own resolve. Right now, though, he didn’t want to push her. “We would be honored to join you,” he said. “Our business can wait.”

Ellie nodded. “Please, sit,” she said, gesturing to Marcus, who had stood when she entered. “There’s no need to stand while I fill my plate.”

Marcus didn’t protest. Nick stayed by the heater, though, and watched as she selected her breakfast from the array of dishes laid out before her. “I am surprised that we have the room to ourselves,” he said. “Surely your other guests need to eat.”

Ellie’s hand paused over the meats, deciding between steak and kidneys. “Most of my guests won’t be out of their beds before ten. We are still early, my lord — this may be the country, but I see no reason to keep country hours.”

She had kept country hours when he first knew her, all alone in that small manor house where her father had left her to be schooled and then ignored. But her current life wasn’t one of isolated contemplation. “Then I am surprised you are awake when everyone else is still abed,” he said.

Left unspoken was that he had kept her awake later than her other guests, but not even a tremor of her hand betrayed any memory of the previous night. She settled in at the table and sent the footman for a cup of chocolate before saying, “Lucia told me about the fire. I could hardly stay sequestered in my room after learning of it.”

So it wasn’t a desire to see him that had lured her downstairs — or at least not a desire she would admit to.

“Your maid is well informed.”

“That is what I pay her for. But she could not tell me what you plan to do about it.”

“Find the responsible party, of course.”

Ellie had taken a whole plate of foodstuffs. Her chef was French, but whoever was responsible for breakfast had an Englishman’s taste. None of it seemed to her liking today, though. She ignored the meats and nibbled on a piece of toast as she considered Nick’s words. “How do you propose to find him?” she finally asked.

Nick returned to the table and took his seat. “Marcus says no strangers have been seen in the immediate neighborhood, so the culprit may be based in London. It would be best if I went there to solve this rather than disturbing your party.”

She paused in mid-bite, slowly looking up at him as her hand fell away from her mouth. “Running away, are you?”

“Not in the way you think.” He paused, just long enough for his words to sink in, but not long enough to draw Marcus’s attention before he continued. “But if my presence here poses a risk to your safety, it would be best if I left. My enemy, whoever he is, doesn’t seem averse to risking others’ lives to get to me.”

“But won’t it be harder for you to stay safe in London? With the crowds, it would be far easier to harm you there and come away clean — here, the villain must be much more careful, and can make fewer attempts as a result.”

“Whoever the villain is, he can’t be too effective in crowds. If he knew what he was doing, he would have succeeded in Madras,” Nick said.

“But it sounds as though at least one of those attempts was hired done,” Ellie protested. “What if the culprit has taken matters into his own hands? You may face a more motivated foe than you did in Madras.”

The footman returned with Ellie’s chocolate. Marcus filled the pause his entrance created. “I agree with Lady Folkestone, if she’ll allow it.”

Ellie sighed. Nick bit back a grin as he said, “I’m glad to see my safety has united you.”

“That’s going a bit far,” she said.

Marcus raised his hands. “I’m not trying to forge an alliance. But I do think Nick is safer here than in London.”

Nick looked at the footman again, gesturing to get his attention. “You may wait outside the room. Don’t return until another guest joins us.”

The footman bowed and left, betraying no curiosity at all over Nick’s request. Nick waited until the door closed before he leaned in. “There is an army of servants here, many of whom aren’t suited for service. Any one of them could join the enemy for the right price.”

“Just because the staff happens to be younger than usual doesn’t mean they are disloyal,” Ellie protested. “This is a very good job, better than most of them could get outside the theatres — I doubt they would risk it. If anything, they have been more discreet than any of us could expect. Surely some of them have heard about the body in the shed, but if they have, they’ve kept it to themselves.”

“How can you know that? Someone must have let it slip, or the shed wouldn’t have been set on fire.”

Ellie frowned. “It’s possible, of course. Servants know everything we do, no matter how discreet we are — it’s the price of having them. But they don’t survive in my employ if I catch them passing secrets about me. And if any of them have said anything to our visitors’ servants, you can be sure the subject of the highwayman would have been raised by now. Do you really suppose that my brother would have let it go unremarked if one of his servants had heard of it?”

“True. But how many servants are on the estate?”

Ellie looked at Marcus, who shrugged. “Folkestone usually has a butler, a housekeeper, an estate manager, Mrs. Grafton, my valet, the chef, his two assistants, six footmen, four upstairs maids, a laundress, and three downstairs maids. But with the party, there are double those numbers of footmen and maids, plus the guests’ maids and valets. And their grooms and coachmen — and our grooms and gardeners.”

“Don’t forget the usual scullery maids, in addition to the extra help in the kitchens that we hired in from the village,” Ellie said.

Nick had mentally counted as they spoke. The estimate stunned him. “If every guest has a servant, there are well over a hundred servants on the grounds. Can you really tell me that I can trust all of them with my life? Or, more importantly, your lives?”

Ellie nodded firmly. “My servants aren’t prone to violence. If they were, I would have used them to throw you out of my ball that first night.”

Nick laughed. “I shall hire some ugly brutes for you so that you may accomplish such tasks in the future.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Thank you, but no. Still, you do have a point about the visitors. I shall see if Lucia has learned anything about them.”

It shocked him, how adept Ellie was at considering these issues. His need for her raged ever hotter because of it. If she were nineteen, he would have shielded her from all of this. But Ellie no longer needed to be shielded. Protected, yes — he would certainly overrule her on the issue of her ornamental footmen. Shielded, though…

She caught him staring at her. She met his gaze without hesitation. His need to keep her safe stunned him. Imagining a world without her face, her voice, her paintings — it was impossible to imagine. Even if he gave in to what was prudent, let her go, and never saw her again, he would need to know that she lived and was safe.

The irony of wanting her safe when he was also bent on torturing her wasn’t lost on him. But the question of what to do with her was one for when they were alone, not in the breakfast room. And certainly not with Marcus watching them as though he was appalled by what they were doing to each other. Nick cleared his throat.

“I will stay at least for a few days — until we have any evidence that proves whether the threat is based here or in London.”

Ellie looked relieved. And then she looked aggrieved, as though remembering that keeping him safe at Folkestone also meant keeping him in her bed. “Do try not to be killed here. It will harm my reputation as a hostess.”

“I appreciate your concern, Lady Folkestone,” he said drily. “But I may harm it anyway. I intend to continue befriending your guests. If they are all like Sir Percival, I may save our assailant the trouble and burn the house myself.”

Ellie protested even as she laughed. “Percy isn’t that bad.”

“His poems are awful,” Marcus interjected.

“Yes, but he knows it, and he does it anyway because he likes it. If more people were like that, London would be a far better place. Even hardened industrialists like you may benefit from a few days of idle talk.”

It wasn’t the days of talk he looked forward to — it was her, at the end of every night, that made the days bearable. He didn’t say it, though. He turned to Marcus instead. “It might be worth the effort if you returned to the village today, and perhaps the next town or two beyond that. As word of the fire spreads, someone may remember something.”

Ellie finished her chocolate and pushed away her plate. “Is there anything you wish for me to do? Or should I merely keep the guests entertained until you are ready to bait them?”

He couldn’t tell whether she wanted to help, whether she was just being polite, or whether she hoped to get him alone. He tried to read her, but her smile wasn’t calculating or inviting and there were no clues in her eyes.

Perhaps he should stop trying to read her and start asking her. “Do you want to help?”

She blinked. The question surprised her, just as every choice she was offered by him surprised her. That blink was enough to reassure him, even though he tried to wait for her words rather than just listening to his gut.

“I want to help,” she said. “I must take care of my responsibilities this morning, but I shall be free in two hours or so.”

He looked at the clock. It was only half past eight, still too early to make a call. But he nodded in her direction. “Eat something else — you’ll need your strength. And then you should change into something warmer. Meet me in the front hall in two hours. We are overdue for a visit to the dower house.”